Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  “Damn,” Holger said. “Damn and damnation.”

  “Sorcery!” said Brother Amadeus, who had had a fireball shot at him on his first case six months previously, and was still jumpy about it. “A daemon summoned to appear within the room, a serpent with a daggered tongue sent down the chimney—”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Holger said. “He was stabbed through the door. You can see the stain where his blood hit the woodwork, and the scratches of the knife through the knot.”

  “He was ensorcelled against his will to press his head against the door, so that his vile murderer—”

  “He was looking to see who was outside.” Holger sighed. He had been saddled with Brother Amadeus to help with his investigations in the Hoche case. Amadeus had not been much help, and much of Holger’s energy was taken up in giving the man errands and diversions to keep him out of his hair. “Brother, the Lord Provost must be informed that his secretary is dead. Take word to him. Tell nobody else.” That would be good for twenty minutes of peace, at least.

  Amadeus disappeared. Holger squared his shoulders, turned away from the body and left the room, closing the door behind him. He headed for the stairs.

  A murder inside the chapter-house was bad enough, but if what the mysterious note had said was true, that this was the man who had deliberately tipped off the Tzeentch-worshippers in Priestlicheim, causing them to butcher the inmates of the nunnery and flee, then that made things impossibly worse.

  Brother Heilemann was a relative newcomer to the halls of the chapter-house and the order: he had been brought in as part of the new administrative team after the new Grand Theogonist Johann Esmer had appointed his own officers to the head of the order. He was not formally a member of the Order of Sigmar, but in his few months as the secretary and right-hand man of Lord Lang, the Lord Provost of the Order of Sigmar, he had impressed the witch hunters who had grown to know him. Holger had heard tavern stories of how his insights and advice had brought breakthroughs and arrests in a number of long-running open cases—something badly needed since the demise of the Untersuchung.

  Assuming that the accusation was true—and Holger noted grimly that the word of an unnamed stranger, an empty inn room and a temple with a few occult symbols chalked on the floor was hardly evidence—then why had Brother Heilemann done it? Politics was one possibility: there were conflicts between the Order of Sigmar and members of the Grand Theogonist’s court, and even between the factions within the order itself, the supporters of Lord Bethe, the new Lord Protector who had replaced the late Lord Gamow, as well as the Lord Provost and the Lord Supplicator, against the hardliners and old-timers who still followed the ways of Volkmar. But the matter of the massacre at Priesdicheim was not one on which the factions within the order were divided, its failure had brought shame on the entire order, and Holger was not a visible or vocal member of either side.

  That left two options. Either he had been on the side of a third party, one that wanted to see the order disgraced, the nunnery destroyed and the cultists get away. Or he was on the side of the cultists, or had important friends who were, or was one of them himself.

  Unthinkable.

  Holger reached the bottom of the stairs and strode down the hallway to the porter’s desk. Old Max was sitting there, his eyes dark and heavy with sleeplessness. The midnight to noon shift on the front desk was usually regarded as punishment. Max took pride in it.

  “Brother Anders,” he said. “There’s a message—”

  Holger cut him off. “Did Brother Heilemann have any visitors last night?”

  “Visitors? Yes, a messenger from Nuln, around three bells. I made a note of it.” The man opened the daybook on the table, leafing through pages of hand-written entries.

  “What kind of visitor?”

  “A witch hunter. I didn’t take his name. He said he had urgent news.” Max looked up, realising that this was not a routine enquiry. “I do hope Brother Heilemann isn’t angry,” he said.

  “No,” said Holger. “He’s not angry. Describe the witch hunter.”

  “Tall,” Max said, “and dark, and in a hurry. A broken nose. Strange hair. Carried a pack. His clothes looked shabby, but then he’d just ridden from Nuln. He had another letter, but he left that one with me.”

  “He did? Who was it for?” Holger demanded.

  “For Brother Karin. She took it when she went into the chapel for Matins this morning.”

  Holger stared at him hard. “Brother Karin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she have any other messages this morning?”

  “Just that one.”

  Holger’s gaze did not move from Max’s old, scarred face, but his mind was suddenly somewhere else, somewhere very focused and intense, and cold. He had watched Brother Karin read that message, and he knew who the mysterious letter-writer and the murderer of Brother Heilemann was.

  Max was holding out another piece of parchment to him.

  “What’s this?”

  “The other message.” Max looked faintly exasperated. “The one I told you of. Came while you were out.”

  “Where from?”

  Max shrugged. “Another boy, another stick.”

  Holger took the parchment and cracked the thin wax seal. The handwriting was familiar by now.

  If you want to know more then come to Corum’s Fields, by the Templar Oak. Come alone. Arrest me now and you will never know the truth.

  He read it over and over, and each time more questions flooded through his brain, each demanding an answer. And there was the death of Brother Heilemann to be investigated too—questions would be asked and answers would need to be found. He was aware that Max was looking at him strangely. Standing here, in the hallway of the Altdorf chapter-house, these surroundings that had become his home and that embodied and exemplified all he knew and all he aspired to be, he felt the foundations of his world shift a little.

  “Still carrying the troubles of the Empire on your shoulders, Anders?” The voice startled him out of his thoughts and he turned. Erwin Rhinehart was standing behind him, smiling.

  “Erwin! When did you arrive?” The two men embraced like brothers.

  “Late last night, and we slept late too.”

  “We?”

  “Theo and I travelled together. We scoured the countryside after we lost Hoche at Rottfurt but there was no sign of him. Then we followed the crusade north.”

  “How close are they?”

  “We left them at Weissbruck. They’ll be at the city gates in a day or so.” Rhinehart scratched the back of his head absentmindedly. “Theo’s breakfasting, if you want to see him.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s well. A bit funny. You know how zealously he respects the Protector, the Provost and the Esmerite policies they follow, but at the same time he grows more fanatical and more hard-line. He almost had an old woman up against a stake two days ago for saying this weather would break by the end of the week—claimed it was prophecy, and prophecy was witchcraft. And he won’t stop talking about how he almost had Hoche in Nuln. Like it was a personal injury, a personal insult, as if Hoche damaged him somehow. But that’s nothing compared to…”

  Holger nodded. “You ran into Hoche in Grünburg, didn’t you? How did that go?”

  “That’s… a story for another time. Over a pint.” Rhine-hart ducked slightly as if embarrassed. “Any new reports of Hoche?”

  It was Holger’s turn to feel self-conscious. “He’s been here,” he said slowly, thinking how best to lay his words. “We arrested his companion, a wizard called Oswald Maurer, last night but there was no sign of Hoche himself. Brother Karin had another letter this morning.”

  “What did it say?”

  “She never says. But she did say that he claimed to be in Altdorf, and she took that as an indication he wasn’t.” Holger thought about mentioning it had been delivered by hand, but decided that some things were better kept to himself. Other things, however… “Erwin, I need your help,” h
e said. “You and Theo. Did you know Brother Heilemann at all?”

  “Lord Bethe’s secretary, from Nuln? I knew him to nod at him.” Erwin pursed his lips. “I take it your use of the past tense is significant.”

  Holger took his friend by the shoulder and led him away from the porter’s desk, to a quiet corner. “Dead. Murdered last night in his room, stabbed through the door.”

  It wasn’t easy to startle a witch hunter but Erwin’s eyes were wide. “What? Here? Who was it? One of our own?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Who then? Hoche?”

  Holger paused. “Possibly.”

  “Audacious! The man has no fear. Do you know, when I was following the crusade he rode out to meet me, disguised as a witch hunter? I took him for a Cloaked Brother at first. He just asked questions. Quite unlike the mad hawk Brother Karin paints him to be. Though when I met him the second time…” His voice tailed off again.

  Holger nodded. He wanted to hear more of Rhine-hart’s meeting with Hoche in Grünburg. His brother officer’s written report had been brief and to the point, but there had been a tension in his sentences that had hinted at painful things unsaid. But this was not the time for that.

  “The death’s not been reported yet,” he said. “I was tipped off, and found the corpse a few minutes ago. I have to go out. Can you and Theo take it from here? I can give you two assistants to help.”

  Erwin looked sceptical. “You have to go out, for something more important than the murder of the Lord Provost’s secretary?”

  Holger gave him a look. “The man who told me about the murder. I need to see him. Something big is brewing, Erwin, something big and dangerous. I’ll explain later, in The Fist and Glove. The first round’s mine. And you can tell me about Grünburg.”

  Erwin opened his mouth to speak. Holger said, “Thanks, friend,” put a hand on his wrist for a second and then turned, striding away down the hall, pulling on his gloves.

  Three letters from Karl Hoche and already he was lying to his brother witch hunters. He hoped he was doing the right thing. His gut told him that he was but then his gut had not had any breakfast yet.

  Altdorf is not a city noted for its parks or open spaces. When it became the capital of the Empire upon the crowning of Wilhelm II eighty years ago its high walls were already in place, and nobody saw the need to knock them down to make more room. Land became valuable and crowded. If the inhabitants wanted green spaces, the smell of flowers and an escape from the city’s bustle into the tranquility of nature they either had to be rich enough to afford a garden, brave enough to walk outside the city walls, beyond the shanty-towns of rough-built houses that had grown up outside, or desperate enough to head for Corum’s Fields.

  South of the river, west of the docks, sandwiched between the Altbrug and the westernmost edges of the docks district, with the Circle Theatre at its eastern end, Corum’s Fields sat, a dark brown-green splodge of patchy grass and muddy earth, beaten flat by the feet of a hundred thousand citizens in a hurry to get from one side to another but rarely stopping. A few scrubby trees, pollarded and with their lower limbs broken off by climbing apprentices and vagrants after firewood or dubs, dotted the space. Twice a year fairs were held here, occasional travelling players or performers would pitch their stand here, and once a month the Reiksguard used the space to practise its offensive and defensive manoeuvres. Apart from that, it had no purpose. Nobody owned it so nobody could buy it to build on it, and nobody had built on it because nobody liked it.

  Templar’s Oak stood at the crossroads of the two most used footpaths. Legend, for the few who cared, said that traitors had been hung from its branches at the start of the Age of Three Emperors, a thousand years ago. Now it was a battered old thing, barely thirty feet high, its trunk split and rotting from within. On one side a canker had formed in the wood, a rounded bulge four feet across that made the tree look pregnant and weary. In the drizzle its old bark was as grey and worn as weathered stone.

  Holger approached it cautiously. It didn’t feel like a trap, but he was aware how out of place, how noteworthy a witch hunter was in this place. Hoche had clearly chosen it because it would be easy to tell if he had come alone: anyone loitering on the field would be easily spotted.

  The only people who normally dallied in the park were drunkards, itinerants and beggars. In the thin rain they were dark blobs huddled under the trees, cloaks drawn around them, occasionally moving to swig at a wineskin or try to find a more comfortable position on the wet ground.

  There was only one cloak-covered lump under Templars’ Oak. Holger studied it from a distance. It did not appear to be studying him back. Was this the man who he had been hunting since the start of the year, who had betrayed his regiment and his friends, condemned three thousand soldiers of the Empire to death and killed Lord Gamow, the Lord Protector of the Order of Sig-mar? It looked like a damp tramp.

  He walked forward, drew his sword and lifted the cloak off with its tip. A grizzled figure leered up at him, surprised, drunk and belligerent. It was a tramp. He let the cloak fall, muffling the derelict’s incoherent curses. Perhaps he was too late: perhaps Hoche had already gone. Or perhaps this was a diversion, to get him out of the way while the heretic was elsewhere in the city, doing Sigmar knew what.

  Something caught his eye: a piece of yellow paper stuffed between the ridges of the oak’s bark. He pulled it out and unfolded it. It was the latest handbill, the ones that had gone out on the streets the night before and that had led them to the scruffy room and the wizard, Hoche’s companion. He turned it over. There was nothing written on the back.

  A voice said, “Don’t turn around.” Holger froze. A hand reached from behind him and took his sword from its scabbard. The voice said, “You came alone.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Would you believe my answer?” Holger said, trying to keep any hint of nerves out of his voice, to stay calm and cool. He recognised the voice. Its pitch had changed, grown rougher, but the intensity in it was the same.

  “I would,” the speaker said. “I know about you, Brother Holger. I have heard much of you since we met the year before last, in The Fist and Glove tavern—”

  “I remember the evening.” Holger said. “You claimed to be a merchant, bought three pitchers of beer and asked about the Untersuchung. Your voice was different then.”

  “Much was different then.” The man behind him hesitated for a moment. Then: “Did you get Emilie?”

  “No,” Holger said. “She had gone, and two others with her.”

  “But you found the traitor.”

  “We found a body. You have not convinced me that he was a follower of Chaos.”

  “I have no proof except what I have seen. Do you trust me? Would you believe my words?”

  Holger found himself smiling at the echo of his answer. “Your letter said that you were not trying to earn my trust. Tell me your answers and I’ll tell you if I believe them.”

  He turned around. Hoche stood in front of him, holding his sword, and for a moment he was disappointed. So much had been made of Karl Hoche’s reputation, his deeds and his capacity for evil that this man, scarcely an inch taller than himself, dressed in worn and creased clothes, his hair askew under a large ill-shaped hat and his eyes dark and tired, was an anticlimax. Hoche looked much as he had looked that night in The Fist and Glove, though his face was more worn and his nose had been badly broken.

  So Hoche was only human after all, Holger thought for a second, then pulled himself up tight. However normal his appearance, Hoche was far from human. He noted the way the man’s eyes never stopped moving, studying for threats, and the tightness of his fingers on the hilt of the sword.

  “Tell me your evidence, Herr Hoche,” he said.

  “Call me Karl,” the speaker said. “My evidence is Brother Heilemann, known to me as Herr Stahl. I met him in Nuln. He had contacted a few former Untersuchung agents—how he had discovered their identities I do not know—asking i
f they wished to continue the Untersuchung’s work.

  “Heilemann, I think, had believed the story told by your former Lord Protector, Lord Gamow, that the Untersuchung was a cover for idolators, heretics and worshippers of the dark gods. He was trying to recruit skilled operators for his cult, the Purple Hand.”

  Holger lifted a hand to scratch his nose. It itched. “We know the Purple Hand. Not as much a thorn in our sides as a dagger at our throats. But Brother Heilemann—”

  Hoche dismissed the words with a left-handed gesture. “I don’t know how many of us responded to his letters—you did a thorough job, there are few of us left—but I know I wasn’t the first. Another agent had answered his letters before me. Heilemann had taken him under his wing, and then discovered he had made a mistake. So he got rid of him.”

  “As a priest,” Holger said, “and a member by proxy of the Order of Sigmar, naturally Brother Heilemann would do such a thing if he discovered someone was a member of a banned organisation like the Untersuchung.”

  “A priest or a witch hunter would have the agent arrested and tried,” Hoche said. “It would bring them respect within their order and glory to Sigmar. That wasn’t what happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  “The agent was shot through the head and his body sunk in a remote pond. Would a high-ranking priest working for the Order of Sigmar do that?”

  “Sometimes the end justifies the means,” Holger said.

  “Sometimes,” Hoche said. “Does this sound like one of them?”

  Holger was silent. Arguing here would divert the discussion, and he did not want to do that. But he digested the information.

  Hoche’s stare, fixed on his face, didn’t waver. “Someone tipped off the witch hunters about my presence, and I had to flee the city. I followed Stahl—Heilemann—to Grissenwald, where he was staying with the Oldenhaller family. He could have had me arrested. Instead he sent a man who tried to bum me to death in my inn. Not the act of a man of Sigmar, but the act of a man with something to hide, and a fear that someone has discovered it.”